New Ulm weekly review., 1887-09-14

shown in the painting, and the river
bank. 4 is said to have been founded by
the youthful mistress OF castle across
the Rhine, who was captured III the
stiffness OF night by Hugo, one of
the Rheinstein family While Hugo
was crossing the Rhine with his prize,
terrible storm arose which threatened
to sink his frail vessel. Already the
boat had sprung leak, when the lady
knelt down and vowed to build a
church to st. Clement if he would de-
liver her from present danger as well
as from the fate apprehended from her
ibidinous captor. Forthwith the saint
appeared amid a profusion of celestial
light, and at his side she walked ashore
over the crests of the foaming swayes,
while the boat and its crew sunk to the
bottom of the Rhine. On the spot
where under the guidance of the saint
she had reached the bank, the Young
lady afterwards erected church, whose
existence in this skeptical age furnishes
undisputable proof of the truth of the
above legend.
During the rule of Emperor Rudolph
OF Habsburg, a number of knights who
defied his authority by persisting in
their depredations, were put to death at
some place which the most laborious
historical research has been unable to
locate to the present day. It is we'll
known. however, that for many years
mass was read for the souls of these
beheaded knights at the Church of St.
Clement, and on this account it is gen.
orally supposed that the place of execu-
ton must have been near that church.
The third painting on the same wall,
on the left of the folding-doors, repre-
sents Mount Kyffhaeuser in Thuringia,
near the Lower Harz Mountains. Ac-
cording to a popular legend, Emperor
Frederick (Barbarossa), who in con-
junction with Philip II of France and
Richard I of England undertook a
crusade against Saladin and died in
Syria in 1190, is sleeping in a magnif-
cent hall in the bosom of the Kyhhaeu-
ser, whittier he has taken with him the
splendor and power of the German EN-
pire. He is seated upon an ivory
chair, resting bis head and arm upon a
marble table, through which his red
beard has grown with the lapse of time.
Once in century he sends page to
the outer world to ascertain whether
the ravens are still circling round the
mountain top. The disappearance Of
the ravens is to be the signal for him to
return and restore to the empire its
former power and glory. There are
many who believe that Barbarossa act
ually returned in 1871 and had hand
in resurrecting portion of the old en-
plre; and those who are familiar with the
drift of German politics at the present
day, will concede that, if Barbarossa's s
kneeling down at Venice and putting
his neck under the pope's foot in token
of submission constituted an essential
part OF imperial greatness, the above
theory is not far from being substanti-
ated.
Aristotle taught that the fates of ua-
tions are repeated in an eternal circle,
and the venerable Ben Akiba, in Gutz-
kow's play .'Uriel Acosta,'' expanded
this doctrine into the dictum that every
thing has happened before. Whether
this rule holds good if applied to all
local occurrences, cannot say; but it
is certainly illustrated in a most re-
markable way by the adventures of Rip
Van Winkle in the Catskill Mountains,
so graphically related in Washington
1rving's '.Sketch-Book.' In view of
my subject I refrain from narrating in
detail the history of Epimenides, who
twenty-five centuries ago went through
the remarkable performance of sleeping
for fifty years iu Cretan cave, and
then returned, a stranger to the sur
rounding world. Probably some time
after the castle on the summit of the